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ADVENTURE
“Oh thank you,” she said quietly. “I guess I’ll start to-day. –
Viaburi! You go along Noa Noah, speak ’m come along me.”
Noa Noah was her head sailor, who had been boatswain of
the Miélé.
“Where are you going?” Sheldon asked in surprise. – “Vlaburi! You stop.”
“To Guvutu – immediately,” was her reply.
“But I won’t permit it.”
“That is why I am going. You said it once before, and it is
something I cannot brook.”
“What?” He was bewildered by her sudden anger. “If I have
offended in any way – ”
“Viaburi, you fetch ’m one fella Noa Noah along me,” she
commanded.
The black boy started to obey.
“Viaburi! You no stop I break ’m head belong you. And
now, Miss Lackland, I insist – you must explain. What have
I said or done to merit this?”
“You have presumed, you have dared – ”
She choked and swallowed, and could not go on.
Sheldon looked the picture of despair.
“I confess my head is going around with it all,” he said.
“If you could only be explicit.”
“As explicit as you were when you told me that you would
not permit me to go to Guvutu?”
“But what’s wrong with that?”
“But you have no right – no man has the right – to tell me
what he will permit or not permit. I’m too old to have a guardian, nor did I sail all the way to the Solomons to fi nd one.”
61
JACK LONDON
“A gentleman is every woman’s guardian.”
“Well, I’m not every woman – that’s all. Will you kindly
allow me to send your boy for Noa Noah? I wish him to launch
the whale-boat. Or shall I go myself for him?”
Both were now on their feet, she with fl ushed cheeks and
angry eyes, he, puzzled, vexed, and alarmed. The black boy
stood like a statue – a plum-black statue – taking no interest in the transactions of these incomprehensible whites, but
dreaming with calm eyes of a certain bush village high on
the jungle slopes of Malaita, with blue smoke curling up from
the grass houses against the gray background of an oncoming
mountain-squall.
“But you won’t do anything so foolish – ” he began.
“There you go again,” she cried.
“I didn’t mean it that way, and you know I didn’t.” He was
speaking slowly and gravely. “And that other thing, that not
permitting – it is only a manner of speaking. Of course I am
not your guardian. You know you can go to Guvutu if you want
to” – “or to the devil,” he was almost tempted to add. “Only,
I should deeply regret it, that is all. And I am very sorry that
I should have said anything that hurt you. Remember, I am
an Englishman.”
Joan smiled and sat down again.
“Perhaps I have been hasty,” she admitted. “You see, I am
intolerant of restraint. If you only knew how I have been compelled to fi ght for my freedom. It is a sore point with me, this
being told what I am to do or not do by you self-constituted
lords of creation.-Viaburi I You stop along kitchen. No bring
’m Noa Noah. – And now, Mr. Sheldon, what am I to do? You
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ADVENTURE
don’t want me here, and there doesn’t seem to be any place for
me to go.”
“That is unfair. Your being wrecked here has been a godsend to me. I was very lonely and very sick. I really am not certain whether or not I should have pulled through had you not
happened along. But that is not the point. Personally, purely
selfi shly personally, I should be sorry to see you go. But I am
not considering myself. I am considering you. It – it is hardly
the proper thing, you know. If I were married – if there were
some woman of your own race here – but as it is – ”
She threw up her hands in mock despair.
“I cannot follow you,” she said. “In one breath you tell
me I must go, and in the next breath you tell me there is no
place to go and that you will not permit me to go. What is
a poor girl to do?”
“That’s the trouble,” he said helplessly.
“And the situation annoys you.”
“Only for your sake.”
“Then let me save your feelings by telling you that it does
not annoy me at all – except for the row you are making about
it. I never allow what can’t be changed to annoy me. There is
no use in fi ghting the inevitable. Here is the situation. You
are here. I am here. I can’t go elsewhere, by your own account.
You certainly can’t go elsewhere and leave me here alone with
a whole plantation and two hundred woolly cannibals on my
hands. Therefore you stay, and I stay. It is very simple. Also, it
is adventure. And furthermore, you needn’t worry for yourself.
I am not matrimonially inclined. I came to the Solomons for
a plantation, not a husband.”
63
JACK LONDON
Sheldon fl ushed, but remained silent.
“I know what you are thinking,” she laughed gaily. “That
if I were a man you’d wring my neck for me. And I deserve it,
too. I’m so sorry. I ought not to keep on hurting your feelings.”
“I’m afraid I rather invite it,” he said, relieved by the signs of
the tempest subsiding.
“I have it,” she announced. “Lend me a gang of your boys
for to-day. I’ll build a grass house for myself over in the far
corner of the compound – on piles, of course. I can move in
to-night. I’ll be comfortable and safe. The Tahitians can keep
an anchor watch just as aboard ship. And then I’ll study cocoanut planting. In return, I’ll run the kitchen end of your household and give you some decent food to eat. And fi nally, I won’t
listen to any of your protests. I know all that you are going to
say and offer – your giving the bungalow up to me and building a grass house for yourself. And I won’t have it. You may
as well consider everything settled. On the other hand, if you
don’t agree, I will go across the river, beyond your jurisdiction,
and build a village for myself and my sailors, whom I shall
send in the whale-boat to Guvutu for provisions. And now
I want you to teach me billiards.”
CHAPTER VII
A HARD-BITTEN GANG
Joan took hold of the household with no uncertain
grip, revolutionizing things till Sheldon hardly recognized
the place. For the fi rst time the bungalow was clean and orderly. No longer the house-boys loafed and did as little as they
could; while the cook complained that “head belong him walk
about too much,” from the strenuous course in cookery which
she put him through. Nor did Sheldon escape being roundly
lectured for his laziness in eating nothing but tinned provisions. She called him a muddler and a slouch, and other invidious names, for his slackness and his disregard of healthful food.
She sent her whale-boat down the coast twenty miles for
limes and oranges, and wanted to know scathingly why said
fruits had not long since been planted at Berande, while he
was beneath contempt because there was no kitchen garden.
Mummy apples, which he had regarded as weeds, under her
guidance appeared as appetizing breakfast fruit, and, at dinner,
were metamorphosed into puddings that elicited his unqualifi ed admiration. Bananas, foraged from the bush, were served,
cooked and raw, a dozen different ways, each one of which he
65
JACK LONDON
declared was better than any other. She or her sailors dynamited fi sh daily, while the Balesuna natives were paid tobacco for
bringing in oysters from the mangrove swamps. Her achievements with cocoanuts were a revelation. She taught the cook
how to make yeast from the milk, that, in turn, raised light
and airy bread. From the tip-top heart of the tree she concocted a delicious salad. From the milk and the meat of the nut
she made various sauces and dressings, sweet and sour, that
were served, according to preparation, with dishes that ranged
from fi sh to pudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of
cocoanut cream over condensed cream, for use in coffee. From
the old and sprouting nuts she took the solid, spongy centres
and turned them into salads. Her forte seemed to be salads,
and she astonished him with the deliciousness of a salad made
from young bamboo shoots. Wild tomatoes, which had gone to
seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, and sauces. The chickens,
which had always gone into the bush and hidden their eggs,
were given laying-bins, and Joan went out herself to shoot
wild duck and wild pigeons for the table.
“Not that I like to do this sort of work,” she explained, in
reference to the cookery; “but because I can’t get away from
Dad’s training.”
Among other things, she burned the pestilential hospital,
quarrelled with Sheldon over the dead, and, in anger, set her
own men to work building a new, and what she called a decent, hospital. She robbed the windows of their lawn and muslin curtains, replacing them with gaudy calico from the tradestore, and made herself several gowns. When she wrote out
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ADVENTURE
a list of goods and clothing for herself, to be sent down to Sydney by the fi rst steamer, Sheldon wondered how long she had
made up her mind to stay.
She was certainly unlike any woman he had ever known or
dreamed of. So far as he was concerned she was not a woman at
all. She neither languished nor blandished. No feminine lures
were wasted on him. He might have been her brother, or she
his brother, for all sex had to do with the strange situation.
Any mere polite gallantry on his part was ignored or snubbed,
and he had very early given up offering his hand to her in getting into a boat or climbing over a log, and he had to acknowledge to himself that she was eminently fi tted to take care of
herself. Despite his warnings about crocodiles and sharks,
she persisted in swimming in deep water off the beach; nor
could he persuade her, when she was in the boat, to let one of
the sailors throw the dynamite when shooting fi sh. She argued
that she was at least a little bit more intelligent than they, and
that, therefore, there was less liability of an accident if she
did the shooting. She was to him the most masculine and at
the same time the most feminine woman he had ever met.
A source of continual trouble between them was the disagreement over methods of handling the black boys.
She ruled by stern kindness, rarely rewarding, never punishing, and he had to confess that her own sailors worshipped her,
while the house-boys were her slaves, and did three times as
much work for her as he had ever got out of them. She quickly
saw the unrest of the contract labourers, and was not blind to
the danger, always imminent, that both she and Sheldon ran.
Neither of them ever ventured out without a revolver, and
67
JACK LONDON
the sailors who stood the night watches by Joan’s grass house
were armed with rifl es. But Joan insisted that this reign of terror had been caused by the reign of fear practised by the white
men. She had been brought up with the gentle Hawaiians,
who never were ill-treated nor roughly handled, and she generalized that the Solomon Islanders, under kind treatment,
would grow gentle.
One evening a terrifi c uproar arose in the barracks, and
Sheldon, aided by Joan’s sailors, succeeded in rescuing two
women whom the blacks were beating to death. To save
them from the vengeance of the blacks, they were guarded in
the cook-house for the night. They were the two women who
did the cooking for the labourers, and their offence had consisted of one of them taking a bath in the big cauldron in
which the potatoes were boiled. The blacks were not outraged
from the standpoint of cleanliness; they often took baths in
the cauldrons themselves. The trouble lay in that the bather
had been a low, degraded, wretched female; for to the Solomon
Islander all females are low, degraded, and wretched.
Next morning, Joan and Sheldon, at breakfast, were
aroused by a swelling murmur of angry voices. The fi rst rule of
Berande had been broken. The compound had been entered
without permission or command, and all the two hundred
labourers, with the exception of the boss-boys, were guilty of
the offence. They crowded up, threatening and shouting, close
under the front veranda. Sheldon leaned over the veranda
railing, looking down upon them, while Joan stood slightly
back. When the uproar was stilled, two brothers stood forth.
They were large men, splendidly muscled, and with faces
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ADVENTURE
unusually ferocious, even for Solomon Islanders. One was
Carin-Jama, otherwise The Silent; and the other was BellinJama, The Boaster. Both had served on the Queensland plantations in the old days, and they were known as evil characters
wherever white men met and gammed.
“We fella boy we want ’m them dam two black fella Mary,”
said Bellin-Jama.
“What you do along black fella Mary?” Sheldon asked.
“Kill ’m,” said Bellin-Jama.
“What name you fella boy talk along me?” Sheldon demanded, with a show of rising anger. “Big bell he ring. You no
belong along here. You belong along fi eld. Bime by, big fella
bell he ring, you stop along kai-kai, you come talk along me
about two fella Mary. Now all you boy get along out of here.”
The gang waited to see what Bellin-Jama would do, and
Bellin-Jama stood still.
“Me no go,” he said.
“You watch out, Bellin-Jama,” Sheldon said sharply, “or
I send you along Tulagi one big fella lashing. My word, you
catch ’m strong fella.”
Bellin-Jama glared up belligerently.
“You want ’m fi ght,” he said, putting up his fi sts in approved, returned-Queenslander style.
Now, in the Solomons, where whites are few and blacks
are many, and where the whites do the ruling, such an offer to
fi ght is the deadliest insult. Blacks are not supposed to dare so
highly as to offer to fi ght a white man. At the best, all they can
look for is to be beaten by the white man.
69
JACK LONDON
A murmur of admiration at Bellin-Jama’s bravery went
up from the listening blacks. But Bellin-Jama’s voice was still
ringing in the air, and the murmuring was just beginning,
when Sheldon cleared the rail, leaping straight downward.
From the top of the railing to the ground it was fi fteen feet,
and Bellin-Jama was directly beneath. Sheldon’s fl ying body
struck him and crushed him to earth. No blows were needed to be struck. The black had been knocked helpless. Joan,
startled by the unexpected leap, saw Carin-Jama, The Silent,
reach out and seize Sheldon by the throat as he was halfway to his feet, while the fi ve-score blacks surged forward for
the killing. Her revolver was out, and Carin-Jama let go his
grip, reeling backward with a bullet in his shoulder. In that
fl eeting instant of action she had thought to shoot him in
the arm, which, at that short distance, might reasonably have
been achieved. But the wave of savages leaping forward had
changed her shot to the shoulder. It was a moment when not
the slightest chance could be taken.
The instant his throat was released, Sheldon struck out
with his fi st, and Carin-Jama joined his brother on the ground.
The mutiny was quelled, and fi ve minutes more saw the brothers being carried to the hospital, and the mutineers, marshalled by the gang-bosses, on the way to the fi elds.
When Sheldon came up on the veranda, he found Joan
collapsed on the steamer-chair and in tears. The sight unnerved him as the row just over could not possibly have done.
A woman in tears was to him an embarrassing situation; and
when that woman was Joan Lackland, from whom he had
grown to expect anything unexpected, he was really fright-
70
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